Frasier Crane
Frasier Winslow Crane is a fictional character on the American television sitcoms Cheers and Frasier, portrayed by Kelsey Grammer. Grammer received award recognitions for portraying this character in three different NBC shows, including a 1992 one-time appearance in Wings. He was created in the 1984 as Diane Chambers's love interest, part of the "Sam and Diane" triangle. Intended to appear for only a few episodes, however, Grammer's performance for the role was praised by producers, prompting them to expand his role and to increase his prominence in Cheers. After Cheers ended, the character moved to his spin-off series Frasier, totalling his overall appearance into twenty years. In Cheers, he is married to Lilith Sternin (Bebe Neuwirth) with their son Frederick in Boston. When Frasier premiered, as learned, he moves back to his birthplace Seattle after his divorce from Lilith, who still retains child custody of Frederick in Boston. There, he reunites with his estranged father Martin and brother Niles, who were created at the time that the concept of the spin-off began. In his final episode, Frasier is last seen in an airplane landing in Chicago. Cheers The character of Frasier Crane was created in the third season of Cheers (1984–1985) by series creators Glen and Les Charles as Diane Chambers's (Shelley Long) "romantic and intellectual ideal" following her breakup with Sam Malone (Ted Danson). Frasier Crane is considered Sam Malone's rival and opposite, and part of the love triangle, "a different form to the Sam-Diane relationship", said Glen Charles. The show's writers saw the character as "the role Ralph Bellamy used to play in Cary Grant movies—the guy the lady falls in love with but it isn't real." John Lithgow was originally chosen by Cheers producers for the role, but turned it down. Grammer believed that he had failed the audition because no one laughed, but was chosen because of the quality of his performance with Danson. Frasier was supposed to only appear on a few episodes before Diane left him, but Grammer's performance was praised by series executives, leading to an extended role in the series. Frasier According to an April 1–4, 1993, telephone survey of 1,011 people by the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press (now Pew Research Center), before the Frasier premiere and the Cheers finale, Sam Malone (Ted Danson) scored 26 percent as a favorite character, and Frasier Crane scored 1 percent. For a question of spinning off a character, 15 percent voted Sam, 12 percent voted Woody Boyd (Woody Harrelson), 10 percent voted Norm Peterson (George Wendt), and 29 percent voted no spin-offs. Frasier Crane, whose own spin-off Frasier debuted in September 1993, was voted 2 percent to have his own show. Initially, the creators did not plan a spinoff from Cheers out of failure concerns. Instead, they wanted to star Kelsey Grammer as a different character who would resemble Malcolm Forbes, "a magazine mogul" and "a motorcycle enthusiast", and then would have been paralyzed by an accident. The idea was deemed a failure and then scrapped. Then the creators decided to move Frasier Crane out of Boston to avoid any resemblance to its predecessor Cheers. The spinoff idea would have focused on "his work at the radio station", but they found its eventual resemblance to the older sitcom, WKRP in Cincinnati. Therefore, they decided to add in his private life, such as his father Martin and brother Niles. In 1993, after Cheers ended and before Frasier premiered, Frasier and Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth) soon divorced, and Frasier's son Frederick is under Lilith's child custody, leaving Frasier childless. In the pilot "The Good Son", as announced in the radio show, Frasier no longer enjoyed his life in Boston, such as frequently visiting the Cheers bar for beer. Therefore, he has moved to Seattle, where his brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) lives, to live with his own life comfortably. Frasier works for the radio station, KACL, as the host of his psychotherapeutic radio show, The Dr. Frasier Crane Show, produced by his producer and friend, Roz Doyle (Peri Gilpin), who flirts with many men and has many ex-boyfriends. Later, his father Martin (John Mahoney), a retired cop with a bad hip, ends up living with him, and Frasier becomes more worried about him, especially at his father's current state. (In Cheers, Frasier's father is supposed to be an off-screen dead scientist.) Therefore, Frasier hires housekeeper Daphne Moon (Jane Leeves) (although he wanted someone classier than Daphne, who is psychic). Moreover, Martin brings in his dog Eddie, whom Frasier despises. Throughout the series, while Frasier had several friends in Boston, he is not able to forge many friendships in Seattle. His brother Niles Crane and his producer Roz Doyle are essentially his only friends in Seattle. Category:Main Characters Category:Crane Family Category:KACL